True market competition terrifies established industries that have gotten too comfortable in their specialized fields and now refuse to innovate. Occupational licensing rigs the game against hardworking individuals, who, as a result, are the ones who end up paying the highest price.
On paper, Raelee Nicholson would seem like the perfect candidate for a four-year college. Scoring in the 88th percentile on her college boards and receiving straight A’s in all of her honors courses, Nicholson is an excellent student. But as summer approaches and her years spent at her public high school in the south of Pittsburgh come to an end, Nicholson is not getting ready to start at a four-year university. In fact, she isn’t even planning on enrolling at a community college.
The increase resulted in a minimum wage that was greater than 75 percent of the Puerto Rican median wage. In fact, the situation grew so dire, unemployment in Puerto Rico surged and its GDP per capita declined by almost 7 percent between 2007 and 2013.
The decision to launch Paving for Pizza was born out of an unmet demand in the marketplace. The government was failing to meet the needs of drivers on the road, which in turn was inhibiting Domino’s ability to live up to its promise of offering quality products to its consumers.
Critics like to characterize individualists as hermits, unwilling to work with the rest of society and preoccupied with their own self-interest. To be sure, self-interest does play an integral role in the classical liberal tradition. But this does not make its followers antisocial by any means. In fact, without society, our self-interests could not feasibly be served. And without self-interest, society’s ends could not be met either.
All in all, this technology is allowing individuals to live a more free, decentralized life, which is truly the key to individualism.
Without the ability to govern ourselves, it leaves an opening for the government to swoop in and assume responsibility for our lives. This might be why so many individualists and liberty-minded people are also deeply interested in the field of self-improvement and personal growth: One of the best ways to teach others that government force is not needed is to show how self-sufficient we can be without it.
Almost two years ago, Finland decided to scrap its own welfare system and replace it with a UBI. The experiment was only set to last for two years, at which point the government of Finland would analyze the results and reach a conclusion about the experiment as a whole.
Before Uber came to town in 2014, Austin Police Department’s data showed that the city had an average of 525 drunk driving arrests per month. When these numbers were revisited a year after ridesharing came to Austin, drunk driving arrests had dropped by five percent. This trend continued the following year when the number of drunk driving arrests dropped by an additional 12 percent, bringing the average number of arrests to about 438 per month.
The student loan crisis is a serious issue in this country, especially for the many Millennials struggling to make monthly student loan payments. It is currently estimated that 70 percent of all Americans graduating with bachelor’s degrees will leave college with a burden of debt on their shoulders. Left with the prospect of making student loan payments for years after they finish their degrees, many students are looking for new avenues to fund their education that does not require federal student loans.
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